Libertyville To Fight Lake Forest Appetite

August 07, 1991|By Jodie Jacobs.

Expecting to be the next target in a drive to move 970 potentially lucrative acres into the Lake Forest school systems, Libertyville High School has promised help to another nearby school district facing annexation of land into Lake Forest.

Donald Gossett, superintendent of Libertyville High School District 128, said this week that his district will oppose ``very vigorously`` any attempts to detach land from Rondout Elementary District 72 and attach it to Lake Forest Elementary District 67.

``We anticipate the next step will be to come after the high school,``

Gossett said. Lake Forest High School District 115 could seek to take the same land from the Libertyville High School District.

The detachment battle was launched last week, when seven Lake Forest property owners filed petitions at City Hall requesting that their land and adjoining properties, totaling about 463 acres, be detached from the District 72 and annexed to District 67. Petitions also were filed with the Lake County regional school superintendent.

The petitioners and District 67 officials argue that the land properly belongs in the Lake Forest school system because children there should be attending school in their own community.

Only two or three children live in the area in question, which is being developed mainly as offices, but the land is valuable for the taxes its owners pay.

The land described in the petition was annexed to Lake Forest in recent years and includes the Conway Farms office complex and the grounds of the private Lake Forest Academy.

Conway Farms` annexation agreement with the city called for its owners to seek to join the Lake Forest school systems. Besides the area in the Rondout and Libertyville districts, some 500 acres lie in the Stevenson High School District and Lincolnshire-Prairie View Elementary District, and those districts could eventually be affected as well.

Gossett estimated that a successful detachment could cost the Libertyville district between $750,000 and $1 million annually ``just in the education fund when the Conway Farms office complex is completely built out.`` Gossett said he did not have figures on current revenue generated by the land, but he noted that the office complex was less than half completed.

The potential revenue loss would hurt Rondout as well, District 72 President Sherry Starr said.

She estimated her district received $130,000 in taxes from the land, a figure expected to steadily rise in future years.

Calling the detachment attempt a ``land grab,`` Starr criticized the Lake Forest district for attempting to take the land ``now that it was worth something.``

The district ``was perfectly happy for us to have it when it was farm land,`` she said.

A letter explaining the petitions and the district`s intention ``to fight detachment`` will be sent to Rondout parents, Starr said.